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Monthly Archives: February 2018

Note: Our church’s youth group rewrote the Gospel stories for each Sunday of Lent and then presented them as children’s stories during worship.

Second Sunday of Lent, Feb. 25

Mark 10:17-31, (Jesus and the rich guy)

Narrator 1: Last week we heard a story about Jesus’ first sermon, where he talked about coming to bring good news to poor. This was good news for him too, since he was a poor person. You may remember that we described him an unemployed person from Detroit, Michigan who lost his job when his factory closed.

Narrator 2: In this story he and his friends are about to get on a Greyhound bus, but then they hear this really loud noise above them. All the sudden it gets really windy in the Greyhound parking lot. They look up and what do they see?!? It’s a helicopter coming in for a landing! “What in the world?!?” they say to each other.

Narrator 1 : The helicopter lands and out walks Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world. He walks right up to Jesus and says:

Bill Gates: “Hello brilliant teacher and movement founder, what would it take for me to join your movement?”

Narrator 1: He tried to impress Jesus, by calling him “brilliant” and “a founder,” because he expected Jesus to say the same thing to him and be so happy he wanted to join the movement.

Jesus: But instead of being impressed Jesus said, “No person is brilliant. Only the creator of the universe is brilliant.” Then he went on, “in terms of joining the movement, you know the commandments.”

Bill Gates: “You’re right, and I have kept them all. I even give BILLIONS of dollars to charity.”

Jesus: Jesus looked lovingly at Bill and then he continued. “I’m not just asking that you give away billions of dollars, I’m asking that you stop making money through companies that exploit people and the environment and learn to follow the leadership of poor people. Then you will understand what my movement is about… it’s about treasure not related to money.

Narrator 1: Bill was shocked at Jesus’ words and was also shocked that Jesus hadn’t congratulated him for being a good person. He got back in his helicopter with a heavy heart because he wasn’t ready to do what Jesus had instructed.

Jesus: Jesus’ friends were also surprised that he had been so hard on Bill Gates. Jesus could tell, so he went on. “It’s really hard, nearly impossible, for people with lots of money to understand what our movement is about. They don’t understand that their wealth depends on other people being poor. They are so used to being the experts and telling people what to do that they aren’t able to follow the lead of poor people. Let me put it another way, it’s as hard for a rich person to understand our movement as it is for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle.”

Narrator 1: Everyone laughed at that. It’s a funny image. A camel… trying to fit through the hole in a needle. Have you ever tried to thread a needle?? And, in addition to the funny image, Jesus was also referencing a very small doorway that was called the “eye of the needle.” The doorway was so small that a camel would literally need to crawl through it. Camels aren’t known to crawl.

You could also say it’s as hard for a rich person to join the movement as:

–giving up screen time for a WHOLE year
–or a T-rex dabbing
–or an elephant twirling on a fidget spinner
–or, finding affordable housing in the Bay Area
It’s not impossible, but it’s really hard to imagine happening.

Jesus: “With God’s power though,” Jesus said, “it is possible.” Then he continued talking to his friends. He said, “I know you have given up a lot to be part of this movement. And I want you to remember that what you have given up–homes, cars, money, property, family relationships–you will get all of that back 100 times over as we continue to share together. As a community we have so much abundance through our sharing. Who would have thought that giving everything away would make you truly rich?”

Narrator 1: So Jesus, like we said, was radical and said things that people thought were weird. He was a poor person who was teaching other poor people and together they were creating a movement to change the world. He called the movement the “kingdom of God.” The movement was about being in healthy relationships with each other and working together for justice. It was about sharing, about everyone having enough food and everyone having a home and being free.

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During our series on “Capitalism: A Bible Study,” we invited people in our congregation to tell a short story on what the Kingdom of God looks like on earth. This story was told by Tree on Feb. 25, 2018.

When I heard that the topic for Lent was going to explore Capitalism and the Bible, I thought that information about Gerrard Winstanley and the English Diggers or True Levelers should be included, and suggested that to Sheri and Joanna. Later, Sheri asked me to share a “mini-story” about the Diggers and what they mean to me.

In 1967 during the summer of love, I hitchhiked to San Francisco to visit my sister who lived in the Haight Ashbury. She wasn’t home, so I wandered down to the Panhandle in Golden Gate Park and hung out. I was hungry and at some point a big flatbed truck arrived with Country Joe and the Fish singing “one two three four what are we fighting for” (an anti-Vietnam war song that I loved), and the Diggers came out with spaghetti and fed us all.

The Diggers were a group of people in the early sixties who took their name from the English Diggers of 1649 who believed in a world that was free of private property and buying and selling. The San Francisco Diggers mainly fed people every day in the park, but also started free stores, free medical clinics, and the Haight Ashbury Switchboard. Today on bus stops you might see advertising for a Free City in reference to City College being free now. That was the last name and vision of the Diggers, the Free City Collective.

Visiting the Haight during that time and getting fed by the Diggers actually changed my life dramatically. I returned to San Francisco in 1970 to start my own Digger-like free meal program in the park and in the process of figuring how to do that I met a group of people who lived in an intentional community or commune, who loved my idea and offered to help me. I wound up living with them for 20 years and have stay connected with them still after 48 years.

We lived communally and shared all things in common, including money. I learned more about the San Francisco Diggers, who left behind a rich history. Gerrard Winstanley and his radical Christianity, which was influenced by the early Anabaptistists, won over my heart. Long before the Occupy movement or Standing Rock, the English Diggers occupied the common lands in England and started planting the land with vegetables and inviting others to come work together and eat bread together. It was such a radical yet simple idea that it was put down within 6 months (they were also pacifists and didn’t fight back when attacked). I am still inspired by both Digger movements and continue to believe in doing things for free… buy if you must, but don’t sell. I also embrace Gerrard Winstanley’s spiritual belief that God created the earth for all to share…a common treasury. I owe it all to that one meal in the park with the Diggers; it was like the Last Supper, it was that special.

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This is the second sermon in a Lenten series called “Capitalism: A Bible Study.”

Mark 10:17-31

I will start right off by saying that this sermon is going to be about the “underside of capitalism.” It’s going to be about violence and exploitation and suffering. It’s going to be about what we generally don’t talk about in this country, where it’s often assumed that capitalism is the best economic system ever and that anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts or godless or naive. I will also say that this is a complicated topic, and I enter it with some trepidation. There are libraries that could be filled just with books written about capitalism by people who make wildly divergent claims about it.

I also want to say that I think capitalism has brought about some good things. I am not in the “capitalism is all evil all the time” camp. Karl Marx himself believed that capitalism — despite its many problems — had the great virtue of immensely increasing the productivity of labor to the degree that society could finally overcome the scourges of scarcity and necessity. Capitalism has greatly increased economic growth and standards of living. It has lifted many people out of poverty to the point that more people today die of diseases related to overeating — like diabetes and heart disease — than to starvation. Others celebrate the dynamism, freedom and creativity that capitalism unleashes.

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This is the first sermon in a Lenten series called “Capitalism: A Bible Study.”

Luke 4:14-21

I’ve heard the saying, “We must read the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other” attributed to about five different people throughout my life. But no matter who said it or even how cliched it may seem due to excessive repetition, it’s still true. If we believe that the Bible contains wisdom that can offer illumination, critique and feedback to our world as we know it, then we have to be two-handed readers. We have to read the Bible and we have to let the Bible read us.

But how often do most First World Christians bring the wisdom of the Bible to bear on our economic system, other than, perhaps, what often amounts to platitudes about sharing with the needy or about being good stewards of our wealth? According to Biblical scholar Ched Myers — who has written extensively on the “Biblical economy” and whose thought forms much of my sermon for today — we can’t even understand the Bible if we don’t understand the standard of “economic justice that is woven into its warp and weft. Pull this strand,” Myers says, “and the whole fabric (of the Bible) unravels.” (All quotations are from The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics.) Scripture actually becomes unintelligible to us if we can’t or won’t read it economically.

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Note: Our church’s youth group rewrote the Gospel stories for each Sunday of Lent and then presented them as children’s stories during worship.

First Sunday of Lent, Feb. 18
Luke 4:16-21, “Jesus’ first sermon”

Narrator 1: Before we get started with the story, I want to tell you a little bit about Jesus. He was a radical guy, some would say a quirky dude. He was poor and didn’t come from a powerful or famous family. Not everyone agreed with him or could accept what he had to say. He was kinda like Robin Hood or Martin Luther King Jr. or Mr. Incredible. No matter what, he did what was right—that’s integrity.

Narrator 2: In this story, Jesus shows up in his hometown—Detroit, Michigan. Jesus was unemployed. He used to work at a car factory until the factory closed. After that he was hitch-hiking around the country for awhile. One weekend he got a ride to Detroit with a truck driver and decided to go to his home congregation for a worship service.

Subversive singers use hymns as protest

After weeks of planning and selecting their targets, members of First Mennonite Church of San Francisco entered the bank and handed staff a note with their demands. What happened wasn’t a heist but a hymn sing.

Wearing signs critical of laws facilitating skyrocketing rents and corporations not paying their fair share of taxes, about two dozen adults and children broke into four-part harmony Jan. 13 at downtown banks. Modifying the lyrics to songs, the protestors sought to disrupt business as usual and “Come let us all unite to vote to make it fair.”

“We had probably eight songs, and at Chase Bank we weren’t able to stay to get through them all,” said action organizer Rosanna Kauffman. “. . . We stayed until the police came and asked us to leave, and that was probably about 15 minutes.”

The group was able to complete its entire set at Wells Fargo, where high ornate ceilings offered fabulous acoustics.

Kauffman said the congregation has been having conversations for a couple of years about how to be more involved in movements for justice, following Jesus’ call to stand with poor and marginalized people.

“Early Anabaptists were big disruptors who would joyfully shake things up and make a commotion and sing in public,” she said. “That was a way the early church lived out Jesus’ teaching. So we were inspired from that — getting in touch with that part of our identity.”

As Pastor Sheri Hostetler sang with the group in Wells Fargo’s temple to modern finance, she couldn’t help being reminded of Jesus chasing out money lenders.

“It didn’t feel like we were chasing them out, but bringing the light of Christ,” she said. “. . . There are things that the bank is engaged in — many things — that are antithetical to the values of Jesus and us, and it felt like we were witnessing to that.”

Skyrocketing rent

The choir participants — several of whom work in social services — sang critiques of two California state measures. Kauffman said the “Costa Hawkins” law protects corporate landlords, facilitating fast-accelerating rent hikes, and Proposition 13 contains a loophole that has kept property taxes from being raised on some corporations and banks since the 1970s.

“It also kind of feels like a scary time for our country, and with the congressional tax bill that was just passed that is just so devastating to the poor while giving cuts to corporations, we felt we could try to make a difference with locals at least,” Kauffman said.

To put the region’s skyrocketing housing prices into context, Hostetler described a retired friend who is a single mother of a single mother. She pays roughly $1,700 a month for an apartment, well below market value of closer to $3,000 for people moving into the building, because increases are capped.

“Every year when the rent goes up, she asks if this is the year she has to move from the place where she raised her daughter,” Hostetler said. “If she had to leave, I don’t know where she’d go. . . . People are getting literally driven out of the Bay Area unless they are very highly paid workers.”

Subversive songs

Subversive creativity can be potent. Innocuous in worship on Sunday morning, voices raised in song prompt police involvement at a bank. It doesn’t take a foreign authoritarian regime to make worship an act of protest.

When President Trump was inaugurated, Hostetler and some other people from First Mennonite were arrested for participating in a symbolic blockade, singing “The Peace of the Earth Be With You” to police wearing riot gear.

“I think the kingdom of God is political. I say that with caution, because I am aware of how things get politicized,” she said.

“ . . . There are structures within our economy and politics that harm people, and I think we as Christians are called upon to speak to those and speak truth to those powers.”

Kauffman agreed that living out peace and caring for others shouldn’t make Anabaptists the literal “quiet in the land.”

“We need big change, and I want to do more than pray about it. I want to do everything I possibly can to create it,” she said. “. . . Jesus wasn’t quiet. He was standing up to empire and was so threatening, and that is why he was killed.”

More hymn sings may come. Hostetler anticipates First Mennonite will discuss how it might get involved with the Poor People’s Campaign, a national movement led by William Barber to “challenge evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality.”

The congregation has made its hymn lyrics available online to other harmonious disruptors.